The 'Pursuit' Of Happiness.

BY URVIL JAMES VILLARUEL

Jan. 29, 2016, Toronto, ON - The funny thing about happiness is that it always comes at a cost. Happiness, in this case, is almost always followed by a supreme sense of sadness. That is, if you are attached to that happiness and seeking for it to make you whole.

All life, from what we can see with our eyes, is built up of duality. If I gain, someone else must lose. If I choose this, I can never choose that. If there is a me, there must certainly be a you. There are only a few states in this life that allow us to see past this separation and accept things as they truly are. As humans, we have always been on a “pursuit” of happiness. Always told that, “In order to fulfill some innate desire, we must look externally at other sources of happiness,” sources which are not so fulfilling -- clothes, cars, money, objects, boats, chains, houses, people. We are never truly satisfied. Thus, we seek out more. The pursuit of happiness never stops; for, if it did, we would not be happy anymore.

The truth is, happiness, like all real treasures, is hidden within you. Where is the best place to hide something that no human will ever think to look? Inside. But, going inside is scary. Going inside will reveal the true nature of what it is that we really want -- despite what we think we may want. Going inside is difficult. That is why most of us rarely ever practice it. And, in the end, don't we all just want to be loved? Isn’t that really where all this desire for happiness really stems from? But, what is love? Certainly not this attached sense of love had towards people, objects and things. No, that sort of attachment always breeds with it a sense of disappointment, an expectation that can never be met.

If we learn to accept things as they truly are, see things as neither good nor bad, and learn to un-attach ourselves to any feeling states of the mind, only then can we truly be free (truly be "happy"). Though, in this case, would that state of happiness not actually just be a state of awakedness? Slowly, slowly; bit by bit; becoming awake to the reality of what surrounds -- by becoming awake to the happiness within us. Because we are love, we just can’t quite see it sometimes.